“We're in this together”: Attachment insecurities,dyadic coping strategies,and relationship satisfaction in couples involved in medically assisted reproduction

Attachment is an important predictor of relationship satisfaction and attachment insecurities are a risk factor for couples under stress. Drawing from the Vulnerability–Stress–Adaptation model, we investigated whether dyadic coping strategies (DCS) would explain the links between attachment insecurities and relationship satisfaction in 97 couples involved in medically assisted reproduction (MAR). Path analyses revealed that for women and men, attachment insecurities (anxiety, avoidance) were associated with their own lower relationship satisfaction through their lower use of positive DCS. Attachment avoidance was also associated with participants' own lower relationship satisfaction through their own lower use of negative DCS. Men's attachment avoidance was also related to their partner's lower relationship satisfaction via their own and their partner's lower use of positive DCS. The findings suggest that promoting the use of positive DCS may be important to preserve relationship satisfaction in couples involved in MAR.     

Measuring the Benefit of Offering Auxiliary Services: Do Bag‐Checkers Differ in Their Sensitivities to Airline Itinerary Attributes?

When firms evaluate their service system design choices, there is typically more uncertainty surrounding the value that a particular auxiliary service provides than there is on the cost of providing that service. To help inform this decision, we propose an approach where we compare the relative value of the segment of passengers who use an auxiliary service to the relative value of the segment that does not use it. We demonstrate this approach for a typical auxiliary service common to the airline industry. In 2008, most US airlines implemented checked baggage fee policies to decrease their costs by reducing the number of customer service agents needed in the check‐in and baggage handling processes. The success of this change has led to a current debate at many of these airlines on whether to make further staffing cuts in these areas, essentially making it even less attractive for passengers to check their baggage. Our proposed methodology helps answer whether passengers who continue to check bags in today's baggage‐fee era are more or less valuable than passengers who do not check bags. We explore this question empirically by examining, through a stated preference survey, if a history of checking or not checking bags can be used to segment passengers based on how their itinerary choices are influenced by common airline service attributes (on‐time performance, itinerary time, number of connections, airfare, and schedule delay). Contrary to the opinions of some top airline executives, we find that the passengers who continue to check bags at airlines that charge baggage fees are generally less sensitive to differences in three of these important service attributes and are less likely to switch airlines when a competing airline improves its offerings along these dimensions. Thus, airlines that charge for checked bags should consider improving the customer experience for their bag‐checking passengers, as they represent a potentially more valuable segment class to the airline.